We’ll never know for sure, but it seems likely that Omaha was invented by hold’em players wanting better action. They figured that by giving each participant four starting cards instead of two. there d be more combinations and bigger hands, leading to hotly contested pots with more participants. Also, with four cards to start with, players would be tempted to play many more hands. Whoever they were, those innovators were right on a couple of counts.

Hands tend to be bigger in Omaha, and there’s certainly more action, because many participants find something worth playing in almost every hand they’re dealt. After all. even the weakest Texas hold’em players have learned that hands like 9-3. 7-2. and a raft of others just can’t be played profitably, and they’ve learned to release them. But you’ll still find plenty of Omaha players happily entering pots with hands like K-Q-8-8, T-7-4-2, and a host of similar awful combinations.

Don’t make their mistake of playing too many hands; it’s the most common mistake recreational Omaha players make. You might be a great poker player at every later stage of the game, but if you aren’t selective about choosing your starting hands carefully, you’re doomed to failure. After all. only one hand can win the pot — or in the case of Omaha/8, two of them: a high hand and a low one. And you know what? Despite all the carping you’ll hear at the table from people who figured to win the pot until the dreaded last card took it away from them, the best hand going in is more likely than not to be the best hand coming out. There are some exceptions to this, like when you’ve got a wraparound straight draw with 20 outs that’s favored over hands currently better than yours, but we’ll get to that later.

For now, just remember this: Most of the time, best in equals best out. The implications of this simple little statement are profound. It means you should throw away all but your better starting hands, and the sooner you do so, the better off you’ll be. You’ll be saving all the money you’d otherwise lose by making weak calls with bad hands. Here’s a fact little known to chronic losers: The more cards you re dealt in a specified poker game, the stricter your requirements must be for entering the pot with your starting hand. For example, it’s a lot easier to find two-card combinations in Texas hold em that work together well enough to be played before the flop than it is to find four coordinated starting cards that you can profitably play in Omaha. That’s particularly true in Omaha/8. Nevertheless, time and time again you’ll see clueless players entering pots with two big cards and two small ones, even if there’s no synchronicity whatsoever between them. This folly will soon be yours to exploit.

We’ll get into the details of hand selection later on in this book, and we’ll provide guidelines to ensure that your starting hands are playable and profitable. But for now. realize you’ll soon be able to profit from the fundamental error most of your opponents make: They simply enter too many pots with too many weak hands. So by playing fewer hands, and playing your good hands strongly, you’ll have a significant, profitable edge. Most winning players don’t call many raises, even though they’re the very players who are doing the raising a good deal of the time. How can that be? There are a couple of reasons: Raising gives the aggressive player two ways to win: He may either have or improve to the best hand and win in a showdown, or his raise may cause the other players to release their hands. With a call, you’re usually hoping to improve your hand so that it might win in a showdown. But if you raise, you could win the pot now, with nary another card to be dealt. Raising also enables one to seize control of the hand and dictate the pace of play.

If you’ve raised the flop, you might get to see the turn card for free, or you can go ahead and bet if you like your hand if all opponents check to you. If you raise the flop, you might get someone with a mediocre low draw to release his hand, and that might just enable you to scoop the pot later on. So winning players make the most of the advantages gained by raising. But although they do a goodly share of raising themselves, they’re careful about calling raises. Remember: Whenever someone raises, he’s announcing to the table that he’s got a good hand. While a raise may be based on a bluff and nothing more, or just predicated on a strong draw, most of the time it signifies a good hand. So why would you call a likely premium hand with one not strong enough to beat most “good hands?” As a general rule, unless you’re on a draw for a low hand, straight, or flush, you ought to be betting or raising unless you’ve decided to fold.